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SUBJECT 
TIONALITIES 

of  ifiB 

RMAN  ALLIANCE 

»tK  a.  Mokp  cLn&j^  fronvGermaiv  Sources) 


CASSELL  AND  COMPANY  LIMITED 
LONDON  NEW  YORK  TORONTO 
MELBOURNE 
1917 

PRICE  2d. 


SUBJECT  NATIONALITIES 


OF  THE 


GERMAN  ALLIANCE 


WHEN  Eevolutionary  Russia  proclaimed,  as  her  pro- 
gramme  for  a  peace-settlement,  "  No  annexations  or 
indemnities,  and  the  right  of  all  nationalities  to  determine 
their  own  destiny,"  the  Germans  were  enthusiastic  about 
the  first  clause  and  silent  about  the  second.  This  map 
explains  the  reason. 

If  "  No  Annexations  "  is  interpreted  as  a  return  to  the 
status  quo  ante  helium,  then  the  Germans,  Magyars,  Bulgars, 
and  Turks  will  continue  to  rule  over  the  seventeen  subject 
nationalities  or  fragments  of  nationalities  which  they  ruled 
before  the  war.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  "  No  Annexations  " 
means  that  no  nation  is  to  be  dominated  by  another  nation, 
against  its  will  and  by  the  use  of  force,  then  the  self- 
determination  of  nationalities "  follows  as  a  logical  con- 
sequence, and  a  settlement  on  the  Russian  basis  will  deprive 
the  four  dominant  nations  of  Central  Europe  and  the  Near 
East  of  the  advantages  they  now  derive  from  exploiting 
populations  totalling  as  much  as  half  their  own  number. 

The  problem  of  the  subject  nationalities  of  the  German 
Alliance  is  a  key  to  the  present  international  situation.  It 
explains  why  the  four  nations  in  this  alliance  are  banded 
together,  and  why  they  are  fighting,  as  irreconcilable 
champions  of  the  old  regime,  against  the  new  spirit  in 
politics  which  has  prevailed  in  the  rest  of  the  world. 

The  subject  nationalities  bring  the  German  Alliance 
advantages  of  the  utmost  importance — from  the  German 
point  of  view.    They  give  them  just  the  necessary  leverage 


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for  overthrowing  national  liberty  everywhere  and  making 
their  ascendancy  universal. 

Subtract  the  coloured  areas  from  the  black  areas  on  the 
map,  and  you  are  left  with  four  nations — Germans,  Magyars, 
Bulgars,  and  Turks^ — who  could  enter  a  League  of  Nations 
as  free  and  equal  members  on  the  same  terms  as  the  French, 
British,  Italians,  Swiss,  Belgians,  or  Dutch.  But  add  the 
coloured  areas,  and  you  see  these  four  nations  differentiated 
from  the  other  peoples  of  Europe,  endowed  with  a  tyrannical 
ascendancy  in  a  "  German  Empire,"  an  "  Austro-Hungarian 
Monarchy,"  a  "  Bulgarian  Tsardom "  and  an  "  Ottoman 
Sultanate,"  linked  together  strategicaMy  across  the  national 
territory  of  alien  subject-peoples,  and  banded  in  a  sinister 
league  of  interest,  to  hold  their  wrongful  possessions  and 
extend  them. 

As  conscripts,  industrial  workers,  and  taxpayers  the 
subject-peoples  add  50  per  cent,  to  the  military  strength  of 
the  Germanic  Alliance.  That  is  sufiB.cient  to  explain  why 
that  Alliance  is  determined  to  retain  possession  of  them  at 
almost  any  price.  But  one  cannot  sum  up  so  shortly  the 
consequences  for  the  subject-peoples  which  this  interest  of 
their  rulers  entails. 

A  State  at  war  demands  practically  unlimited  sacrifices 
from  the  individual,  and  even  where  the  interests  and  ideals 
of  State  and  People  are  identical,  the  sacrifice  is  almost 
beyond  bearing.  But  these  subject-peoples  are  not  called 
upon  as  free  men  but  driven  like  cattle  by  force,  to  sacrifice 
themselves  for  a  victory  which  is  to  rivet  their  shackles 
more  firmly  than  before ;  and  many  of  them  are  driven  to 
do  this  in  a  fratricidal  combat  with  their  own  kin,  from 
whom  their  rulers  have  isolated  them  by  an  arbitrary 
frontier. 

The  Frenchman  of  Lorraine  and  the  Alsatian  are  driven 
forward  to  shoot  down  other  Frenchmen,  and  watch  their 
German  fellow-soldiers  committing  their  atrocities  in  France. 
The  Jugo-Slavs  of  Austria-Hungary  are  driven  against  the 
Serbs — their  brother  Jugo-Slavs.  Whole  peoples  have  seldom 


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been  placed  under  a  more  monstrous  compulsion,  and  they 
show  their  abhorrence  of  it  whenever  the  opportunity 
appears.  France  can  boast  that  there  are  more  men  in  the 
French  Army  to-day  from  Alsace  and  the  conquered  half  of 
Lorraine — refugees  from  the  German  tyranny  or  the  sons  of 
refugees — than  from  any  other  single  province  of  France. 
The  French  Army  has  also  a  Polish  Legion,  and  there  are 
Jugo-Slav  and  Tchecho-Slovak  corps  in  the  Serbian  and 
Russian  Armies,  recruited  from  brave  men  who  found  as 
prisoners  their  first  opportunity  of  volunteering  to  fight  for 
their  own  national  cause. 

The  Military  Command  af  the  German  Alliance  takes 
bloodthirsty  measures  against  this  irresistible  reassertion  of 
national  rights.  When  a  Tchech  battalion  went  over  to  the 
Russians  in  Galicia,  the  sister  battalion  was  decimated  behind 
the  Austrian  lines,  and  since  then  they  have  taken  care  to 
send  subject  troops  to  fight  troops  that  are  not  of  their  own 
blood.  Italians  and  Rumanians  are  sent  to  the  Russian  front ; 
Tch echo-Slovaks  and  Jugo-Slavs  to  the  Italian ;  and  Alsatians, 
sent  by  the  German  staff  to  fight  Austria's  battles  in  Galicia 
and  Bulgaria's  in  Macedonia,  have  managed  to  make  their 
way  into  the  French  and  Russian  lines.  But  those  who 
escape  are  few,  for  the  military  authorities  single  out  the 
subject  troops  for  the  most  exposed  positions.  The  subject 
nationalities  are  profitable  to  their  masters  not  only  while 
they  live  but  when  they  die,  since  when  they  die  the  masters 
enter  into  their  heritage.  The  Turks,  who  surpass  the 
Germans  in  "realism"  and  are  far  more  indifferent  to  the 
opinion  of  the  world,  did  not  leave  it  to  the  enemy  to 
perform  the  execution.  They  disarmed  their  Armenian 
conscripts,  drafted  them  into  labour  battalions,  and  massacred 
them  themselves. 

This  is  what  the  subject  nationalities  of  the  German 
Alliance  suffer  in  war  ;  but  the  atrociousness  of  their  treat- 
ment at  thie  moment  must  not  make  us  dwell  more  lightly 
«on  the  oppression  they  endured  in  peace-time  for  years 
before  the  war  was  made. 


4 


This  oppression  took  almost  every  conceivable  form,, 
from  economic  injustice  and  robbery  to  rape  and  murder. 
The  little  circles,  scattered  so  thickly  in  the  map  over 
Germany's  Polish  provinces,  represent  the  lands  expropriated 
from  their  Polish  owners  by  an  Imperial  German  Colonisa- 
tion Commission  and  handed  over  to  Germans — as  ordained 
by  a  law  of  the  German  Reichstag.  The  oppression  of  the^ 
Jugo-Slavs  cannot  be  so  easily  represented  in  visual  form,  for 
the  map  is  on  too  small  a  scale  to  mark  the  railways,  and 
the  administrative  system  of  Krain,  Croatia,  Dalmatia,  and 
Bosnia  is  something  which  it  takes  many  volumes  to  expose. 
But  the  principle  of  Austro- Hungarian  policy  here  is  to- 
isolate  the  Jugo-Slav  provinces  geographically,  to  retard 
their  economic  progress,  to  keep  them  poor  and  divided  and 
uneducated,  in  order  that  they  may  be  exploited  by  the 
Germans  and  Magyars,  and  never  come  into  their  rights 
as  a  nation.  As  for  the  policy  of  the  Turks,  it  is  summed 
up  in  the  apophthegm  of  a  Turkish  gendarme  to  a  Danish 
Red  Cross  Nurse  during  the  massacres  of  1915 :  "  First  we 
kill  the  Armenians,  then  the  Greeks  and  then  the  Kurds."' 
His  superiors  have  completed  the  programme  by  hanging  the 
leaders  of  the  Syrian  Arabs;  and  the  Arabs  of  the  Hejaz — 
which  stretches  away  beyond  the  limits  of  the  map — have 
only  saved  themselves  by  taking  up  arms. 

To  sum  up,  the  possession  of  subject  nationalities  thus 
abused  gives  the  Germanic  Alliance  the  impulse  to  fight  for 
world-dominion,  and  it  makes  a  moral  breach  between  them 
and  the  rest  of  the  world.  In  the  present  war  four  tyrant 
nations  are  at  grips  with  all  the  free  peoples  in  the  world,, 
and  between  them  lie  the  peoples  whom  the  tyrants  have 
enslaved. 


Printed  in  Great  Britain  by  Richard  Tilling, 
io6,  Great  Dover  Street,  London,  S.E.  i.